European Projects

ENTRANCE

02/12/2024 by

MOdular DEtection System for Special Nuclear Materials

The mission of ENTRANCE is to develop and validate a comprehensive user-based ENTRANCE Toolbox for riskbased non-intrusive inspection (NII) of cross-border freight movements, with particular focus on the EU Customs Union border. The aim of the ENTRANCE Toolbox is to enhance border security practitioners’ capabilities to protect society against a wide range of dangerous and illicit materials with minimum disruption of cross-border flow of goods. ENTRANCE will deliver five main results:

Automated Risk Assessment, Threat Recognition and Information Sharing Platform (ENARTIS)
Suite of Non-Intrusive Inspection (NII) technologies for detecting contraband hidden in high-density cargo
Enhanced relocatable unit for non-intrusive detection of wide number of threats including explosives, illicit drugs, chemical warfare agents, nuclear and radioactive materials (NR) and special nuclear materials (SNM) such as enriched uranium and plutonium
Trans-European RPM network for passive detection of illicit nuclear and radioactive (NR) materials combining detection facilities of different types and technologies
Novel high-speed RPM detection technology for passive detection of NR with minimal disturbance of flow.

The ENTRANCE Toolbox will be validated at the EU Customs Union border by five practitioner-led field trials chosen for their relevance, strategic position and feasibility.

The project is co-funded by EU Commission under Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

Starting date

Ending date

October 2020

September 2023

The ENTRANCE Consortium is composed of 18 partners from 9 European countries and consists of Research Institutes, SMEs and Public Bodies. The project is expected to last 36 months with a budget of EUR 7 million.

Website
https://www.entrance-h2020.eu

COMMISSARIAT A L ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES, France

AGENCIJA MITNICI, Bulgaria

Arktis Radiation Detectors Ltd, Switzerland

ARTTIC, France

BERTIN TECHNOLOGIES SAS, France

Center for the study of democracy, Bulgaria

Costruzioni apparecchiature elettroniche nucleari Caen SpA, Italy

Cross-border Research Association, Switzerland

ETC SOFT SP. Z O.O., Poland

Financial Directorate of the Slovak Republic, Slovakia

IRIS INSTRUMENT SAS, France

UE Commission — JRC -JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE- EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Belgium

Ministarstvo Financija, Croatia

Republic of Croatia - Ministry of the Interior — Ministry of Interior, Croatia

SMITHS DETECTION FRANCE SAS, France

University of Padova, Italy

MICADO

02/12/2024 by

European Project for The Monitoring of Radioactive Waste, Kicks Off

Standardize the management of radioactive waste, starting from their non-destructive characterization to transport, storage and real-time monitoring. This is the objective of the MICADO Project (Measurement and Instrumentation for Cleaning and Decommissioning Operations), started on June 3, thanks to Euratom funding, and to the synergy between 8 European partners with solid experience in the field of radioactive waste, nuclear techniques, electronics and information technology.

CAEN is the coordinator of the project and will contribute with more than 40 years of experience in the field of nuclear electronics and a growing presence in the market of complete measurement systems, it will be joined by other to renowned Italian research institutions INFN and ENEA, which have specific expertise on radiation detection and techniques for radioactive material management. The international partners are ORANO and CEA for France, a large company leader in the nuclear energy sector and a public institution which has lead the field of nuclear research in France for years, SCK-CEN for Belgium and CTU for the Czech Republic are two other research institutes whit a solid expertise in nuclear management and algorithm development, finally XIE for Germany that is another SME with experience in X-ray detection.

MICADO provides a complete digitalization process that will facilitate and harmonize all the methods used in the field for waste management as well as for the dismantling and decommissioning (D&D) of nuclear plants. To date, in fact, there is no single, consistent and linear solution to characterize various types of radioactive materials, just as there is no integrated solution for digitizing the enormous amount of data produced. The Digi-Waste RCMS solution proposed in the MICADO project will produce a modular hardware and software system to unify and standardize procedures and methods for non-destructive characterization and monitoring of nuclear waste, proposing itself as an international reference for all nuclear operators, research laboratories and the security authorities, facilitating the exchange of fundamental and often critical information.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 innovation action programme under grant agreement No 847641. This text reflects only the author’s views and the Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein

Starting Date

Ending Date

June 2019

May 2022

The MICADO consortium consists of 8 partners from 5 European countries counting Research Institutes, SMEs and Large companies. The project is expected to last 36 months with a budget of EUR 5 million (EU contribution: EUR 4.5 million).

Caen SpA, Italy

CEA, France

CTU, Czech Republic

ENEA, Italy

INFN, Italy

Orano, France

Sogin, Italy

SCK-CEN, Belgium

XIE, Germany

RADIATE

02/12/2024 by

Research And Development with Ion Beams Advancing Technology in Europe

Eighteen partners from public research and four SMEs, sharing the vision of structuring the era in the field of ion technology application and innovation, join forces in the RADIATE project. Largely complementary national ion beam facilities will be integrated into one single virtual multi-sited ion beam centre providing unprecedented research capabilities for scientists from a large variety of different re-search fields and from anywhere in Europe and beyond.

New challenges arising from the commitment of the EU to Open science, Open innovation and Open to the world will be tackled. To this end an Ion Beam Web Portal will be developed and will serve as pivotal platform for sharing information and soft-ware among researchers and for access to ion beam-related databases and to research data. Combining the consortia of the previous successful EU projects ITS LEIF and SPIRIT incorporating leading high and low energy ion beam labs, and integrating topnotch AMS facilities, a comprehensive, easy, flexible, and efficient access to Europe’s key ion beam facilities will be provided.

Users from Widening Countries and from new research communities, and young researchers are targeted by a dedicated guest re-searcher programme. Innovation managers will be established at selected facilities to raise awareness of the exploitation potential of ion beam technology, to support the technology transfer along the whole value chain, and to spin-off commercial activities.

Reach-through to industry will be enhanced and self-sustainability of the network and its provisions will be achieved based on the economic success associated with the growth of industrial service and technology transfer activities. Joint Research activities involving the industrial partners will target specific challenges for major advances across multiple subfields of ion beam science and technology, thus reinforcing Europe’s leading position in ion beam science and technology.

Co-funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union

The project is co-funded by EU Commission under Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

Starting date

Ending date

January 2019

June 2023

The RADIATE Consortium is composed of 18 partners from 13 European countries and consists of Research Institutes, SMEs and Public Bodies. The project is expected to last 48 months with a budget of EUR 10 million.

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France

Costruzioni Apparecchiature Elettroniche Nucleari Caen SpA, Italy

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), Switzerland

https://www.ionbeamcenters.eu/RADIATE-project-partners/eth-zurich/

Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Germany

Institut Jozef Stefan (JSI), Slovenia

Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST), Portugal

Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum (IMEC), Belgium

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy

Ionoptika Ltd, United Kingdom

Ionplus AG, Switzerland

Jyvaskylan Yliopisto (JYU), Finland

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium

Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia Atommagkutato Intezete (Atomki), Hungary

Orsay Physics SA, France

https://www.ionbeamcenters.eu/RADIATE-project-partners/orsay-physics-france/

Ruder Boskovic Institute (RBI), Croatia

Universität der Bundeswehr München (Uni BWM), Germany

https://www.ionbeamcenters.eu/RADIATE-project-partners/ubw/

University of Surrey (Surrey), United Kingdom

University of Vienna (UNIVIE), Austria

C-BORD

11/11/2024 by

C-BORD – Efficient Non-Intrusive Inspection (NII) of containerised freight is critical to trade and society. Freight containers are potential means for smuggling, illegal immigration, trafficking of drugs, mis-declared goods and dangerous illicit substances, including explosives, nuclear material, chemical and biological warfare agents and radioactively contaminated goods. One inspection NII technology cannot cope with all these targets. The C-BORD Toolbox and Framework will address all these targets and enable customs to deploy comprehensive cost effective container NII solutions to potentially protect all EU sea- and land-borders, satisfying a large range of container NII needs. The C-BORD Toolbox will include 5 complementary innovative detection technologies: delivering improved X-rays, Target Neutron Interrogation, Photofission, Sniffing and Passive Detection. User interfaces and data will be integrated to optimise effectiveness and efficiency of end-users and systems.

The C-BORD Framework will help customs analyse their needs, design integrated solutions, and optimise the container inspection chain; it will address detection levels, false alarms levels, throughput, health & safety, logistics and cost & benefits. C-BORD will increase the probability of finding illicit or dangerous content with at least equal throughput of containers per time unit, reduce the need for costly, time-consuming and dangerous manual container inspections by customs officials, and in case a container is opened, increase the probability of finding illicit materials.

On 3 custom sites, integrated solutions will be trialled respectively addressing the needs of big seaports, small seaports and mobile land-borders. To optimise sustainable impact, C-BORD will actively engage with a large community, will support policy implementation, evolution and start early exploitation planning.

The project is co-funded by EU Commission under Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

Starting date

Ending date

June 2015

November 2018

Technology Providers

The C-BORD Consortium is composed of 19 partners from 9 european countries and consists of Legal Persons, Research Institutes, SMEs and Public Bodies. The project is expected to last 42 months with a budget of EUR 11.8 million.

Le CEA, France

Caen SpA, Italy

University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany

SMITHS HEIMANN SAS

National centre for Nuclear Research, Poland

UniPa — Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy

End Users

Douane — Ministerie van Financien Directoraat Generaal Belastingdienst, The Netherlands

Agenzia delle dogane e monopoli — The University of Manchester, UK

Expert & Service Providers

Hungarian Academy Of Sciences Centr For Energy Research, Hungary

FTK

11/11/2024 by

Fast TraKer for hadron collider experiments

This project aims to develop an extremely fast but compact processor, with supercomputer performances, for pattern recognition, data reduction, and information extraction in high quality image processing. The proposed hardware prototype features flexibility for potential applications in a wide range of fields, from triggering in high energy physics to simulating human brain functions in experimental psychology or to automating diagnosis by imaging in medical physics. In general, any artificial intelligence process based on massive pattern recognition could largely profit from our device, provided data are suitably prepared and formatted.

The first goal consists in demonstrating the system can perform online track reconstruction of full events at the highest luminosities of the LHC and SLHC) at CERN, beyond the limits of any existent or planned device and despite the overwhelming confusion due to the very high track multiplicity and the exceedingly large event pile-up. With this goal we participate to the construction and the test for an high precision real-time tracker built for the ATLAS experiment: the Fast Track (FTK) processor. FTK can improve the capability of the ATLAS detector to select interesting events reach of heavy leptons or quarks within the enormous LHC background. It uses FPGA and ASIC chips to implement, real-time, complex track reconstruction algorithms. The track’s trajectories are reconstructed in 3D, in few dozens of microseconds and the quality of the parameters is almost offline. FTK will increase the ATLAS discovery capability. In parallel we will pursue challenging R&D & new real time computing ideas for more complex applications.

A new industry-academia cooperation will reinforce the FTK team making it suited for such applications. The knowledge transfer will significantly increase the research quality and overall RTD capability and competitiveness of the partners, opening new scientific directions for our technology dissemination.

The project is co-funded by EU Commission under FP7-Cooperation programme (theme: Security) – Grant Agreement n. 312713

Starting Date

Ending Date

February 2013

January 2017

The FTK consortium officially took up work in March 2013. Its kickoff meeting was hosted by the University of Pisa, the program’s coordinator. The consortium consists of two SMEs, four universities, a national nuclear research centre and end users in the form of a customs agency. A list of consortium members is given below. The project is foreseen to be completed in 48 months, within a budget of EUR 1.6 million.

University of Padova, Italy

Caen SpA, Italy

Università di Pisa, Italy

Tawara_RTM

10/10/2024 by

TAp WAter RAdioactivity Real Time Monitor

The TAWARA_RTM project aims at developing a complete platform to control the quality of the tap water with respect to the radioactivity content. The platform will provide a real time measurement of the activity in the water (measuring the gross alpha and beta activity) to verify whether the distributed water is well within the limits set by the EU legislation or if it’s reaching the threshold that requires rapid actions. In the latter case, a message is sent to the water plant management to verify the need of stopping the water distribution. At the same time, a second part of the system is activated, to determine the nature of the contamination by gamma ray spectroscopy, defining the nature of the contamination and the corresponding counter-measures. The determination of the contaminants is also needed in order to establish the effects on the population and produce a full information report to the Civil Security Authorities.

The prototypes of a real time monitoring system and spectroscopy analyzer will be designed, built, tested under laboratory condition and finally installed at the North Waterworks Plant of Warsaw managed by the Warsaw Waterwork Company (Miejskie Przedsiebiorstwo Wodociagow i Kanalizacji w m.st. Warszawie S.A. – MPWIK), for the demonstration campaign. The site selected for the demonstration is particularly sensible for possible radioactivity contamination being in communication with the Chernobyl region through a network of rivers and canals, and due to its proximity with a Polish National Nuclear Waste storage site.

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The TAWARA_RTM system will be designed taking into account that the increase of the water radioactivity might derive from natural phenomena (as earthquakes) but also from a whole set of radioactive and nuclear emergencies. The TAWARA_RTM project will include the development of the complete platform including the fast real-time monitor system (RTM), the spectroscopic system (SPEC) as well as the Information and Communication System that will be designed to include in the future also chemical and biological sensors.

The project is co-funded by EU Commission under FP7-Cooperation programme (theme: Security) – Grant Agreement n. 312713

Starting date

Ending date

December 2013

August 2016

The TAWARA_RTM consortium consists of two SMEs, two universities, two national research centers, a law firm and end users in the form of a water distribution company. A list of consortium members is given below. The project is foreseen to be completed in 30 months, within a budget of EUR 3.4 million, including public and private sector contributions.

University of Padova, Italy

ENEA, Italy

Caen SpA, Italy

Miejskie Przedsiebiorstwo Wodociagów i Kanalizacji w m. st. Warszawa S.A., Poland

SCIONIX, The Netherlands

Università di Pisa, Italy

ENTRANCE

Innovative Projects

ENTRANCE

MOdular DEtection System for Special Nuclear Materials

MICADO

European Project for The Monitoring of Radioactive Waste, Kicks Off

RADIATE

Research And Development with Ion Beams Advancing Technology in Europe